Hi all,
We are proud to announce the availability of a(n unofficial)
Fedora 8 package repository for the ARM architecture.
The package repository has been built for ARMv5 EABI, soft-float,
little endian. The majority of the important and frequently used
Fedora packages have been built for ARM.
The Fedora/ARM architecture wiki page has more info:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM
The easiest way to start using Fedora 8/ARM is to download the
prebuilt root filesystem, which can be booted in QEMU, or chroot'ed
into or booted from on any ARMv5 or later processor running in little
endian mode. Additional packages can be installed by using yum,
which is provided in the filesystem.
A HOWTO which describes getting Fedora/ARM running in QEMU is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/HowToQemu
There currently are a handful of known issues, which are described at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/TODO
Please help us by using the Fedora/ARM port and reporting any issues
you run into so that we can fix them.
thanks,
Lennert

Greetings, exciting times ahead!
Icedtea are about to compile nativly on fc8 arm.
I have left my own machine to compile during this weekend, i expect
the compilation to take about 60h on my 200Mhz 64Mb ram machine.
the compile of the icedtea source ought to be as simply yet it doesnt ;)
hg clone http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea
cd icedtea
./configure
make
I have done some workarounds in order to setup my build environment
and to be able to start the compilation.
This mail will point out my current issues, dig in!
----
Setup the build environment:
Install fc8 on a native arm macine, make sure to add some swapspace.
take a peek on : http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/BuildRequirements
try installing the reccomended packages
yum install /usr/bin/ecj mercurial cups-devel lesstif-devel libXp-
devel libXtst-devel libXi-devel xalan-j2 xerces-j2 \
libXt-devel libgcj freetype-devel gcc gcc-c++ wget java-1.5.0-gcj-
devel alsa-lib-devel firefox-devel glib2-devel gtk2-devel \
ant libXinerama-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel giflib-devel zlib-devel
for each package that yum cant find, remove tha package name from the
command line and try again..
----
Fist issue: getting the sourcecode with mercurial
The mercurial package found in fc8arm are 0.9.4 icedtea build wants
0.9.5 with forest extensions http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/
BuildRequirements
0.9.5 mercurial would need updated python to work...
even when i tried to checkout the icedtea source with 0.9.4 mercurial
hg command the checkout did never seem to complete (got 2.9mb of .hg
data and no more)
hg clone http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea
Workaround to the mercurial issue:
I simply downloaded the .bz2 snapshots of the icedtea and openjdk
directly from the mercurial repositorys webinterface: http://
icedtea.classpath.org/hg/
----
Second issue: eclipse-ecj package not found while installing gcc-java
in main fc8arm repositorys
Workaround: i simply downloaded the rpm from http://
www.wantstofly.org/~buytenh/RPMS.built.crap/ and ran
rpm -i eclipse-ecj.<version>.rpm
this package does not need bootstrapping as kindly pointed out by
Rabeeh Khoury!
now it is possible to install the packages java-1.5.0-gcj-devel and
gcc-java with yum
----
Third issue: firefox webplug build requirements
firefox firefox-devel could not be installed from main repositorys
Workaround to firefox webplug build requirements: run ./configure
with switches to skip the compile of the firefox plugins something
like --disable-webplug (look in configure.am for correct switch)
----
Fourth isse: ./configure expects to find gcj in a dir something like /
usr/java/gcc-gjc/bin
Workaround: since gcj are located in /usr/bin by default in fc8 i
simple made a symlink from
ln -s /usr/bin /usr/java/gcc-gjc/bin
perhaps the gcc-java shoudl populate the java alternatives directory
correctly.
----
install some addisional basic packages required by ./configure like diff
Milestone: now the ./configure works and the compile can begin by
simply calling make!
----
Fifts issue: compiletime
im currently here: having some issues with compile time
My 200Mhz 64Mb ram armv5tejl machine have been compiling for several
hours... since the code takes about 6h to compile on a quad 2ghz G5
machine for the PPC platform, i expect my compile time to take
atleast 60h. Not for the faint of heart!
possible speedup fix untested:
http://gbenson.livejournal.com/15169.html
----
Sixth probably comming issue: as pointed out by Gary Benson who made
the zero code, the compile ought to require libffi
http://gbenson.livejournal.com/14752.html?thread=16288#t16288
good news a libffi source package exists for fc8
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431633
packages approved by Lillian Angel
http://spindazzle.org/Fedora/libffi-2.99.9-1.fc8.src.rpmhttp://spindazzle.org/Fedora/libffi.spec
----
Seventh comming issue: porting of assembler code for ARM
(implementation of spinlocks and the like)
http://gbenson.livejournal.com/13096.html
----
Well thats it!
Have a great hacking day!
Xerxes Rånby
IT-Exorcist
ZAFENA AB
http://www.zafena.se
17 feb 2008 kl. 10.56 skrev Rabeeh Khoury:
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Xerxes Rånby [mailto:xerxes@zafena.se]
>> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 4:04 PM
>> To: Rabeeh Khoury
>> Subject: question about ARM fedora eclipse-ecj in "RPMS.built.crap"
>>
>> Hello im currently watching the icedtea source compile natively on a
>> armv5tel fedora8 host as we speak with the new zero asm patches, have
>> been compiling for 1,5h now ...
>>
>> in order to start the build i installed a redora 8 system yet i
>> had to
>> install the eclipse-ecj rpm from your build dir on
>> http://www.wantstofly.org/~buytenh/RPMS.built.crap/
>>
>> so im curious if you have built the eclipse-ecj package using free
>> tools
>> or if they still needs bootstrapping?
>
> Hi,
>
> I'v built eclipse SRPM from F8 while adding to it the ARM support
> and some changes to the spec file. I didn't do any bootstrap or use
> any proprietry tools. It simply builds :)
>
> I can ask Lennert to put the ARM patch and the spec patch somewhere.
>
> Currently eclipse-ecj works fine for me; while the IDE itself is
> still is not functional (some wiring of arm directories to places
> where eclipse-platform expects are still missing).
> Can you please explain what is missing from your side to fully
> build icedtea?
>